Tuesday, August 24, 2010

The Great Escape

This weekend I got to read a story that pretty much brought one of my favorite childhood books to life.

An alligator was found crouching beneath a car near a sewer grate in New York City. It was just a small one and it wasn't definitively from the sewer, but none the less it's a great story and hearkens to the classic urban legend that gators live in the sewers beneath New York's streets..

Which brings me to another great story. I book I loved as a child and passed on to my children is The Great Escape: Or, The Sewer Story, by Peter Lippman. The story details the life of Silas the alligator, stolen from the swamps of Florida. He was sold to a Family that brought him back to their home in NYC and then as the gator grew, flushed him down into the sewers. Silas then plots with all the other gators on how to get back to Florida.

The illustrations are marvelous with very clever dialogue and observations sprinkled about the page in addition to the story line. If you haven't clicked on the link in "flushed him down," you really should. It is a nice example of what the book is like. My kids all loved the book and it was just as good as I remembered from my childhood.